Throughout my first year at college I have had a habit of being very ambitious with my work but nothing has come close to how ambitious myself and Ben Beckford were for this week’s homework. (the fact I am finishing this homework almost a fortnight after the deadline shows how ambitious it was).

This task marked the final episode of Mark Kermode’s secrets of cinema and therefore the last task we would be set around different genres, the final genre we were given to explore was horror. You can watch the episode here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bfp4h7/mark-kermodes-secrets-of-cinema-series-1-5-horror

Throughout lockdown, me and Ben have stayed in contact and had produced our first lockdown short, a silly comedy titled Men-For-Hire, the week before we were set the horror task.

As Ben is interested in sound design and I have experience in writing, directing, cinematography and editing, we quickly realized that we make a good team so Ben suggested we challenge ourselves to make a short horror film for our final task. I am a sucker for a challenge so immediately got on board and started writing.

My initial idea was about a man with schizophrenia who is in lockdown by himself. I liked this idea as it only needed one actor and could all be shot in my house. I am fortunate that my dad also has a love for filmmaking so I knew I could bring him in to be my actor.

As I started filming I made a realization – making films by yourself is really difficult. I found myself solely responsible for writing, directing, sound recording, lighting, camera operating, scheduling, etc and it was a massive shock to the system as I had gotten so used to working in a crew. This began to weigh quite heavy on me as things inevitably started to go wrong and I become quite pessimistic about the project and my confidence was shattered. This loss of confidence led to a loss of motivation and just thinking about the film became a challenge let alone prepping everything for filming and, to be honest, I really wanted to just quit and do one of the set assignments.

Luckily my dad is a lot more sensible than me and he realized that the film I had written was quite complex and was just too much for me to produce alone. He suggested I massively strip back the story and just use the task as a way to practice building tension and shooting in low light (one of the things I was having the most trouble with). It took me a while to come around to the idea as it felt to me as if I was giving up on the bigger challenge but I eventually accepted he was right.

The new idea was simply to make a film about a guy home alone at night who starts hearing weird noises. This idea purposefully had an extremely simple premise as it allowed me to focus on the main two things: building tension and shooting in low light.

Suddenly the project seemed a lot more achievable and I was able to prep and film the entire thing over 3 nights.

Lighting

As I already mentioned, one of my biggest challenges was lighting my set to be bright enough for the camera but dark enough to look like nighttime. I own two decent quality soft boxes but because I can’t adjust the brightness on them they were unusable for this film as they were just too bright. So I had to work with what I had.

My key light for the entire film was actually my clock as it is the only light in the house that I can adjust the brightness on. I decided to place this behind my subject to create a darker mood for the film.

Also, by making my key light a practical it meant I didn’t have to worry about what was motivating the light in my scene as it was right there for the audience to see.

I then had to add a fill light as my subject’s face was completely in shadow and I again decided to make it a practical light source, writing a laptop into the scene to light my subject. I had the laptop angled up at him to create a sinister look and keep in some of the shadows which I quite liked. I also made sure to keep the laptop’s light nice and white, this helped my subject stand out from the orange background and create some nice depth in the frame.

I then used a combination of either one or two household lamps to fill in any unwanted shadows in the frame. The best example of this is when I used a lamp to light the bottom of the bed in my opening shot.

I found the lamps were a bit to harsh for my liking so I simply taped one of my softboxe’s diffusion sheets to it to create the look I wanted.

Camera settings

As we know, there are three ways to change how much light a camera lets in, so let’s go through those one by one.

ISO

Adjusting your ISO is the most obvious way of changing your exposure. If I was new to filmmaking I would have probably just cranked up my ISO and began shooting. But the higher your ISO the more noise you pick up and the more noise you pick up the more you cry when editing. So to avoid tears, I kept my ISO at 600 as I found anything above that began to let some noise in and I just wasn’t having it.

Aperture

The next way to change your exposure is by adjusting your aperture. But you have to also be aware that changing your aperture also affects your depth of field. Luckily, I had already decided I wanted to shoot with a small depth of field as I wanted my subject to really pop out of the background. To achieve this look I kept my aperture at f/2.8. Being the fastest my lens could go it also meant shooting at f/2.8 let in the most light possible which was a massive win.

Shutter speed

We were taught to always keep your shutter speed at double the value of your frame rate (so if you’re shooting at 25fps your shutter speed should be 50). I set my shutter speed to 50 but the picture was still too dark. So I did a cardinal sin of filmmaking…

By lowering my shutter speed to 30 it allowed the perfect amount of light in. The problem is it meant I would pick up a lot more motion blur. But, as there is practically no motion in my film, I was able to get away with it. So, as painful as it may be to read that I changed my shutter speed, just know that it brought me great pain and I did it with full knowledge of the consequences.

Tension

I could bang on for ages about the many ways I attempted to create tension in this short but we’ll be here all night so instead I’ll just pick out the main techniques I used.

Camera movement

I used camera movement a number of times throughout the film in an attempt to create tension. Here are some of my favorites.

In this shot I used a push in to show my character’s emotions. When my character is listening for a noise the camera is still, as if the audience is holding their breath. Once he brushes off the noise the camera begins moving; he is relaxed.

I used a slow push in a number of times in the film but my favorite example is when my character is looking down the hallway. The push in makes it feel as if whatever he is looking for is slowly getting closer to him. Personally I think this shot came out really well.

This shot was actually filmed on sticks without any movement and I added a push in and tilt effect in post. By adding these effects in post it gave a really unnatural and unsettling feel to this shot. I also added a mask over the doorway to make it completely pitch black. All this coupled with Ben’s great sound design turned this into a really creepy shot.

In this shot I slowly revealed the doorway in an attempt to build anticipation for a jump scare. I again added a mask in post to remove any light spilling out into my hallway and keep that doorway nice and sinister looking.

Here I tried to match my character’s movements with the camera: following as he goes to get up and coming back down with him. I did this to try to visually show his thought process of wanting to check out the noise but then deciding against it. This trick was recommended in the book Master Shots Volume 3 by Christopher Kenworthy.

This shot was one of the most awkward to shoot because of how low I had to get the camera. I wasn’t able to use my slider as it wasn’t long enough so I ended up putting the camera on a thin laminated book and simply sliding it across the floor. This shot took about 8 takes to get right but I was really happy with the outcome.

Composition

I tried to use a number of composition techniques to create an uneasy feeling in the film. I could say a lot about every shot but I’ll just pick out my two favorites.

My opening shot was inspired by Jordan Peele’s Get Out. I used frame within frame and loads of negative space to give the feeling that my character is very alone and make the world outside of the room feel quite sinister.

To achieve this look I set my camera up at the end of my corridor and made sure to get my entire door frame in shot. Then, in post, I masked out everything outside of the door frame, only leaving the shadow on the floor. Finally, I lowered the scale of the entire shot to make my subject look a lot smaller in the frame.

I used a dutch angle a couple of times towards the end of the film to create a more uneasy feeling.

For this shot I used a combination of composition techniques. I used the dutch angle but also put the camera high up so that I could shoot down onto my subject, making him look vulnerable. I also used the rule of thirds but decided to put my subject on the right hand side of the frame leaving all the negative space behind him making the shot feel uncomfortable and making my subject look trapped. This is probably the most complex shot of the entire film due to the number of composition techniques I tried to fit into one frame.

Shot Choice

I tried to be very conscious about choosing my shot sizes in this film as a way of assisting the narrative. I open with a wide to set the scene but then almost immediately jump into a number of close-ups to introduce the character. I made this decision because they always say eyes are the gateway to the soul and I wanted to see what the outcome would be if the first time we properly saw my character is through a extreme close-up of his eyes. I ended up really liking the intimacy of the shot and decided to leave it in the final cut.

I then kept nice and close to my subject until he hears a noise for the first time when I jump out to a wide shot. I did this to emulate how the character has been inside his own head but is now suddenly made aware of the room around him. This wide shot is also a way of reminding the audience how vulnerable my character is.

From this point on I slowly move the camera closer and closer to my subject, mainly sticking to medium sized shots around the mid point and building up to more close-ups towards the end. This is a way of building the intensity of the film and showing how the danger is getting closer and closer to my character.

The final thing to mention about my shot choice is that I decided to use my character’s hands as I way of showing his emotions i.e, typing when he is relaxed, stopping when he is scared, etc. I read somewhere that Steven Spielberg always loved putting an emphasis on his character’s hands and I had always wanted to try to put that into my own work. This project just seemed like the best place to experiment with it and, personally, I think it worked quite effectively.

Editing

Everything I have spoken about up until this point has been entirely my own work but the editing is where Ben got to show off his skills. Everything you hear in this film was both recorded and edited by Ben, only the sound of my dad typing was taken directly from the camera, everything else was crafted by him. This meant, when it came to editing I only had to worry about pacing and color grading (and a tiny bit of masking).

Pacing

There isn’t a great deal to say about the pacing of the film other than I had it slowly build throughout. I let my shots really linger at the start when he hears the first noises to build up a feeling of tension. As my character gets more uneasy the pace gets faster and faster until we hit a really fast section which takes us into act three where we return to lingering shots.

I also added a push in effect to this whole group of clips to help it feel more intense.

Color grade

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not very good at color grading. Luckily I put in a lot of work with my lighting so I knew there wasn’t loads I needed to do. The main issues were that the whole film was very orange due to lighting everything with household lamps and the whole thing was also a little bit too bright. So essentially all I did in the grade was pull back the oranges and bring forward the shadows. It wasn’t very sophisticated but I am still happy with the final look I achieved.

Overall this film was a massive learning experience for me and even though the end result of wasn’t anywhere near as good as what I set out to achieve I am super proud of it. I am not proud of it because I think it is a masterpiece, I am proud of it because I made it, I was able to get it done despite wanting nothing more than to give up. Being isolated from people does horrible things to your creativity and motivation and I think it is a massive achievement for anyone to produce any sort of creative work in these conditions which is why I am so proud of this project, I defeated the lockdown blues.

Of course I wasn’t actually alone in this project so I’d like to give a massive thank you to my dad who helped me through this entire process and to Ben who worked just as hard as I did on this project and pushed me to produce the best work I could.

This week’s task focused around the super popular genre of science fiction. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bf7wrl/mark-kermodes-secrets-of-cinema-series-1-4-science-fiction

I chose pretty much the same task as the one I did for last week’s Rom-Com homework, ‘Write a one page synopsis for a feature film which deals with one of the following sci-fi tropes: Time Travel, Space Travel, Lost In Space, Aliens, Robot Companions, Technology Takes Over or The Future.’

The reason for choosing this task is because one of the only things keeping me sane in lockdown is being creative and I’ve found that these writing tasks offer the most opportunity for creativity, allowing me to engulf myself in a fictional world, so I will most likely continue choosing similar tasks until my real world situation becomes more exciting.

I, personally, have always been conflicted over my opinion of Science Fiction movies as films in the genre can often be quite silly and over the top and often pretty predictable. But on the other hand, when done well, sci-fi has established itself as one of the best genres for exploring humanity and the human psyche, just take films such as 2001: a space odyssey, ex machina or even Wall-E.

Because of this, my sci-fi is going to be a film about humanity and the human psyche disguised as a film about space conquest.

As a child, one of my favorite movies was James Cameron’s Avatar. I really loved how they made humans the enemy against an alien race trying to protect their home. I have now realized Avatar is basically a massive rip off of Dances with Wolves but the core story still manages to work as a sci-fi and my narrative will be loosely similar.

Another film I will be taking inspiration from is The Martian. In The Martian, Mark Watney is stranded by himself on mars and he has to figure out how to get back to earth. I was disappointed when I both watched the film and read the book as I felt they failed to delve very deep into the psychological impact of being stranded in space and I felt it was a real missed opportunity.

My story will not follow one man but a group of astronauts stranded on a distant planet with no way of contacting earth and, unlike the Martian, it will focus heavily on the psychological impacts of this and how each of the crew members deals with it. It won’t be a story about trying to get back to earth but instead a simple story of survival.

I have recently finished reading Alex Garland’s novel, The Beach, about a group of travelers living on a hidden beach and how they deal with being away from society and it has a big focus on the human psyche. My vision for my Sci-Fi film started as The Beach, but in space. (I must also mention that The Beach was made into a movie and I take absolutely zero inspiration from the film adaptation as it is absolute garbage).

In terms of the different options we were given I went for the idea of being ‘Space travel’ or, more appropriately ‘Space Colonisation’. I will follow a group of astronauts tasked with colonizing a planet believed to have the correct conditions for human survival. Our main focus will be on the second wave of astronauts who join an already partially developed colony and are tasked with scientific research of the planet and search for any intelligent life forms already living on the planet.

As you might have guessed, this whole set up is very similar to the real life colonization of the Americas by the Europeans. But instead of drawing inspiration from the systematic removal and extermination of the native people (like Avatar did) I am instead drawing inspiration from the lesser known events of an early colony known as Roanoke. To summarize, early English settlers set up a small colony on an island on the outer banks of the American mainland known as Roanoke. Everything seemed to be going fine but when a resupply convoy arrived a year later the entire colony had dissapeared and, to this day, nobody knows what happened to the people on the island. While it only took up half a page of my history textbook, this story fascinated me and I often pondered over the experiences of the settlers and what it must have been like for them. This week’s task seemed like a great opportunity to delve back into my fascination with the story of Roanoke as my film will be exactly that, early pioneers tasked with colonizing a new world with no way of communicating with anyone except themselves. The only difference is that it will be set in space.

One of the greatest parts of writing a Sci-fi film is that you are not tied down by any real world limitations when it comes to world building and can really come up with anything you want. Despite this, I plan on keeping the setting of my film quite simple as I don’t want my film bogged down in the science and laws of an unknown planet.

Eden

The world in which my film is set will be heavily inspired by Avatar’s Pandora, it will be like a paradise. The atmosphere will be extremely similar to that of earth’s meaning our characters will be able to live on the planet without the need of external life support. The planet will also be able to support human crops. Despite this, all the natural vegetation on the planet will be poisonous to humans meaning the only food they can eat will be the rations brought with them and any crops they can grow themselves. The water will also be poisonous if drank straight from the source but the early settlers will have already installed the tech necessary to make it drinkable.

Other than the problem of food, the planet will be easily inhabitable, with resources similar to that on earth such as wood and rocks and the odd lifeforms they have already discovered will be simple insects which pose no real danger to humans other than the fact they are not safe for human consumption.

The official name of the planet will be Kepler-452b as that is the name of the real life planet considered most inhabitable for humans. My Planet will of course be a fictionalized version of Kepler-452b, taking only it’s name and the hope that it could, one day, be a second home for our species. The human settlers living on the planet will refer to it as Eden, after the garden of Eden from the bible. The astronauts will give it this name simply because they think of the planet as a sort of paradise. But the hidden meaning behind the name hints at some of the crew members attitude towards the planet, believing they have an almost religious ownership of the planet and considering themselves to be deities, giving the planet a purpose, like Adam and Eve.

The comparison to the garden of Eden will also foreshadow the colonies eventual descent into chaos.

The Basic Plot

Before I introduce you to the characters I will quickly outline the basic idea for the film to help you understand what part each character plays.

The second wave of astronauts join the early settlers and begin their tests and examinations of the planet Kepler-452b. An Alien Biologist discovers Alien life forms which are quite primitive in their evolution and pose no real danger to the humans. On the same day the Aliens are discovered a massive storm hits the base, the storm passes but huge clouds remain in the sky making it impossible to communicate with earth and drastically slowing down the productivity of their farms.

Luckily they have a good supply of emergency rations and agree to get on with their mission while they wait for the clouds to pass over. None of the scientists on the planet have a concrete answer on when they expect the clouds to disperse but they are hopeful it won’t be too long. They also know that there is a supply ship about a 2 month journey away from them so worst case scenario they will just have to hold out till then.

A couple of discoveries are made such as, The Alien biologist discovers the body of an Alien who died in the storm which she is able to run an analysis of and a valuable metal (still haven’t decided on a name) is found by the team’s geologist who insists it could make them all billionaires back home. Other than these two advancements everything goes pretty routinely in the passing two months. But still the clouds refuse to disperse.

Regardless, the group receives a message from the supply ship 2 months later (as it is now right above Keplar-452b and it can send signals through the cloud) saying that they will drop off some supplies which will keep the group going till the clouds disperse when the ship will be able to properly land and pick them up. The group rejoices and soon they see the hull of a ship break through the clouds. Their joy soon turns to horror as the ship is suddenly picked up by a strong burst of wind and is thrown into a nearby mountain, being destroyed on impact. The group goes to examine the wreckage but none of the supplies or crew survive the crash.

Suddenly the group is properly alone; No nearby supply ships, no off-planet communication, no sense of when the clouds will clear and running seriously low on their emergency previsions.

A day later the tests on the dead alien return and a major discovery is made – The alien’s flesh is safe for humans to eat. And the moral dilemma is set: Do the humans carry on trying to grow their own food, running the serious risk of them all starving to death, or do they wipe out the local population in order to survive?

Characters

Now onto the most important part, who are our characters?

The first characters we will be introduced to in the film will be on the second wave of astronauts coming to support the first settlers. The biggest difference between the first and second wave is that the mission of the first wave was to set up a base on Eden, so it mainly consists of engineers, a small security force, and a group of scientists tasked with setting up a food and water supply. The second wave is more focused on analyzing the planet and consists of scientists in a variety of different specialisms such as Geologists, Botanists, chemists, biologists, etc. The first wave priorities the survival of the group above all else whereas the second wave has a lot more respect and interest towards the planet itself, this will cause a rift in the group as the story evolves.

Of the second wave scientists we will only be properly introduced to three; a botanist, a geologist and an alien biologist.

The Alien Biologist

Our Protagonist. Inspired by Avatar’s Jake Sully and Dances With Wolves’s Lieutenant Dunbar, The Alien Biologist is the alien sympathizer. She will be the one to first make contact with the aliens and seemingly the only one to view them as intelligent life forms instead of something to analyse.

Our protagonist will also take a lot of inspiration from Arrival’s Louise Banks in the way that she will be totally fascinated by the aliens and strive to find ways of communicating with them peacefully.

I can’t think of a clever name for our Alien Biologist right now so for the time being we will just call her Kate.

One of the first things we notice about Kate is that she struggles with autism, making it hard for her to properly fit in with the rest of the group on Eden. Taking inspiration from X+Y’s Nathan Ellis, Kate will have struggled in social situations growing up leading her to feel very distant from the people around her and become obsessive over her studies into Alien Biology. Her love of Aliens was really born out of her difficulty understanding humans, this causes her to feel very conflicted when she does discover the Aliens as throughout her life she has always felt closer to Aliens than humans.

This is also the reason she was chosen to take part in the mission. The purpose of the mission is to colonize Kepler and make peaceful contact with any intelligent life forms they may find there. Kate was chosen because she respects Aliens and feels a real connection towards them meaning she is the best person to make first contact as she is extremely unlikely to come across hostile.

Throughout the film, Kate won’t have a massive character arc but will have similar development as Lieutenant Dunbar in Dances With Wolves, she will discover the alien colony and spend all of her time learning their culture and the basics of their language. As the humans slowly grow more hostile towards the aliens she will be forced to choose where her loyalties lie.

The Botanist

The Botanist gets along with Kate and seems to be the only person she is truly comfortable around at the start of the film.

The botanist will be one of the younger members of the team and we will learn that he worries about the opinions of those around him, this is the main reason why he gets along with Kate because she is non-judgmental.

The botanist will be in charge of researching possible food sources already growing on the planet. He will soon discover that pretty much everything on the planet is unsafe for human consumption which will annoy him as he worries people will think he is not doing his job well. He decides to try genetically engineering the planet’s resources to make them safe for humans as he thinks this will win him favor from the group.

In terms of the main narrative, I picture the botanist playing a similar role to Etienne in The Beach: He arrives in the new world with the main protagonist but becomes a background character while the protagonist undergoes their journey, popping up from time to time as a friendly face and carrying their own little subplot which will eventually come back to affect the main narrative later in the story.

Of course, we cannot talk about a space botanist without mentioning The Martian’s Mark Watney. So, the botanist in my film will be known as Mark.

The Geologist

The Geologist will have the least screen time out of these three characters but he’ll still play a part in the main narrative. All you really need to know about The Geologist is that he begins the film in high spirits, always talking and cracking jokes, almost giddy with excitement to be on the mission. This creates a very noticeable language barrier between himself and Kate.

A subplot of the film will be The Geologist discovering the rare and expensive material on Kepler. He will become almost obsessed with it as the story progresses and his frustration with the fact he is sitting on a gold mine with no way of cashing it in causes him to be the first crew member to psychologically crack.

This subplot about the rare material is inspired by the mission director in Avatar, Parker Selfridge. Therefore, The Geologist will be called Parker.

The rest of the second wave scientists won’t ever be properly introduced to us but for the most part they will make up the alien sympathizers with only one or two wanting to eat the aliens.

But the story won’t only follow the second wave astronauts, three of the first wave settlers will also play a key part in the narrative, The captain of the first wave, the head of the group’s food supply and the head of security.

The Captain

I decided early on that I wanted to name The Captain after an American General who committed violent acts against the native population as the film is a commentary on all kinds of colonization. I did a bit of research and settled on General Anthony Wayne. To summarize, Anthony Wayne was a soldier in the American Revolution who was promoted to Major-General for his heroic acts. This promotion led him to play a major part in the removal of native Americans from the North-West colonies. General Wayne led American troops in The Battle of Fallen Timbers where his army defeated the natives. After the battle, the native population were forced to leave the north-west territories to make way for white settlement.

The reason I chose Anthony Wayne is because he didn’t join the army with the goal of wiping out an indigenous people like many later American generals, he joined the army to fight for the freedom of his people and fought bravely for a just cause in the American revolution.

All of his horrific acts against the native population stemmed from a completely lack of empathy and the horrendously skewed perception that the natives were Alien and white settlers were the rightful owners of the American Continent. This perception meant he was able to justify his own actions as he put the comfort of his people above the lives of others.

This is exactly the mindset of the Captain in my film and therefore he will take the entire name of General Anthony Wayne and be known as Captain Anthony Wayne.

Captain Wayne will be put in charge of the mission because he is a proven and well decorated Captain in the Galactic fleet. As a member of the first wave his only priority is the survival of his men. Captain Wayne will be fully in support of the eating of the native population because, like his namesake, he views them as a lesser species. Because of this he will eventually take up the role of antagonist but this will only develop after the ship crashes at the midpoint of the film, he will not start out as the antagonist.

Head of Food

This character will actually be referred to as head Botanist but I didn’t want there being confusion between them and Mark in the blog. The head botanist will be one of only a handful of scientists on the first wave and her job will simply be to maintain the supply of human food (such as wheat, potatoes, etc) while Mark’s job is to research the planet’s food supply.

The Head Botanist will be the eldest and most experienced member of the entire crew. We will learn that she has taken part in two failed attempts at colonizing a planet before this one which greatly frustrates her. This will cause her to be quite bitter and maintain the mindset of ‘victory at any cost’.

Her desperation for victory is very loosely inspired by Colonel Mackenzie from 1917 so she will therefore be referred to as Mackenzie.

Head of Security

The final character to get a decent amount of screen time is the Head of Security. He is the only character in the film (along with his small security force) who isn’t a scientist or an engineer and is simply there to look after everyone else while they do their jobs. Due to the very peaceful nature of the planet and its inhabitants this character finds himself with very little to pass the time except keep an eye on the aliens while Kate learns about them. This leads the two to spark up an unlikely friendship as the head of security is completely fascinated by the Aliens, unclouded by science and experimentation, just a childlike curiosity (think E.T)

In my mind, this character is a direct contrast to your classic gun-slinging alien fighter such as Avatar’s Colonel Miles Quaritch. My Head of Security will be a war veteran who has become disillusioned by war and unnecessary violence. He was chosen for the mission because he is calm and collected and will only act out in defense. Unlike most military characters in films, he doesn’t have a burning desire for action and is actually far more comfortable in peace. The passive nature of the aliens will be another source of intrigue and he will grow very fond of their well mannered, innocent nature.

The Head of Security will end up being the loudest voice against eating the Aliens as the film develops.

I decided to name this character after American fur trader Jim Bridger. Jim Bridger was very tolerant of the native Americans and came to know a lot about them, even learning their language allowing him to become a mediator between the natives and the colonists. In this story, the head of security will act as the main spokesperson for the Aliens’ right to not be eaten so it seems natural that he would be named after the famous Mountain Man. He will be known as Bridger.

Robots

You may have noticed that I have mentioned nothing about Robots so far in this blog post and that isn’t an accident. The film is set in the future where robots will be common place in human society just like a mobile phones and laptops are today. Every scientist will have a robot companion to assist them in their studies but other than that they will mostly be ignored by the humans and play little part in the plot simply going unnoticed in the background.

The only robot who plays any real role in the film is Kate’s robot. All the robot’s will have the ability to communicate with the humans but only Kate will engage in conversation aside from work with her robot. Due to her autism, Kate will find it very refreshing and easy speaking to her robot who always gives straight and honest responses. Because of this, Kate will actually have her most open and honest conversations with her robot and the audience will learn a lot about her through the conversations they have together.

I decided to add robots into my story for quite a simple reason actually. The most common ‘enemy’ in sci-fi movies are either Aliens or Robots. Because of this I thought it would be a nice way to subvert audience expectations by having Aliens and Robots be the most passive and peaceful characters in my film and have all fighting take place between the humans.

I did also want the robots to represent cultural assimilation but I realized to pull that off I would have to put a fair bit of focus onto them and that could really clog up and over complicate the story so I decided just to keep them as background characters, peacefully going about their lives while the humans kill each other.

The final part Kate’s robot will play in the story is that the robot will be programmed to put the lives of the humans above all else meaning the robot believes that Kate and the others should eat the aliens. Kate has to then undergo the difficult task of explaining why it is inhumane to kill the aliens, most of the moral questions posed in the film will be addressed in the conversations between Kate and her robot.

Aliens

Appearance

The main inspiration for the appearance of my Aliens are the Ewoks from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi as I want them to come across very nonthreatening. The Aliens in my film will have similar clothing to Ewoks and be a similar size, about waist height on humans. I want the humans to be taller than the aliens to show how they literally look down on them (everytime Kate or Bridger communicate with the aliens they bend down to their height; they sees them as equals).

But I don’t want them to have fur like Ewoks, instead having similar textured skin to humans except with colorful complexions. I want their skin to almost mimic the planet’s wildlife with bold pastel colors, each alien having different colors and patterns, kind of similar to the skin of the Banshees in Avatar.

In terms of skeletons, I imagine the aliens to have very similar proportions to humans, just smaller. The final thing I am set on is I want them to have big eyes to connote innocence and wonder.

Home

The Aliens will be extremely primitive compared to their human counterparts and will live in very similar conditions to the untouched tribes in the Amazon Rainforest with simple shelters made out of the immediate supplies around them.

Tools

Most of the aliens daily routine consists of gathering fruit and plants (they eat a completely plant based diet) gathering resources, building new shelters, repairing damaged shelters, making clothes and making other things such as furniture and beds, etc.

The aliens will develop tools to serve these purposes so their tools will resemble axes, scythes, whittling knives, etc. While some of these tools may come across dangerous to us, the aliens will have no concept of weapons and the tools will simply be used for practical purposes.

All of their tools will be made out of the extremely valuable resource the geologist discovered.

They will also have discovered fire which means pretty much all the scenes after the storm will be lit by firelight (because I love firelight cinematography).

Food

As I mentioned, the aliens will only eat the plants and fruit found on Kepler-452b and those food sources will be in high supply. The Aliens will have a very similar culture to the native Americans meaning they do not believe in greed and ownership so they are very mindful to only pick the food they need, this allows the planet to easily keep up with their demand and they really don’t have to worry about ever running out.

This is a key reason as to why they are so passive. Their reliable food source means they have no need to kill animals and their culture of community and disbelief of ownership and possessions means they have no reason to kill one another.

Religion

The Aliens won’t have any gods but they worship mother nature and conduct a number of ceremonies around the worship of nature. The only ceremony we actually see in the film is a funeral. This worship of nature is inspired by the native american culture.

Language

I am still unsure of what I want the alien language to be but as of right now, I like the idea of their communication being a mixture of speech and sign language. They will be able to make noises like humans (of course in a different language) but they will incorporate movement alongside it. I don’t really know where this idea came from but I think it would be cool

I think that pretty much covers everything you need to know, shall we actually get on with the task I was set now?

Act One

The film opens with the second wave on their spacecraft arriving on Kepler where we are introduced to Kate, Mark and Parker and, through their brief interchanges, we learn a bit about who they are and what their different jobs are.

The ship lands at the basic camp set up by the settlers and we are introduced to Captain Wayne, Mackenzie and Bridger. Captain Wayne briefs them (and the audience) on the planet, Mackenzie fills them in on the food situation and Bridger explains that they have yet to discover any intelligent life forms but believe it is likely some exist on the planet. After the brief Bridger will meet Kate and explain that he will be her personal security officer as she is undergoing the most dangerous job.

We will then jump forward to the pair, with Kate’s robot, exploring Eden and looking for intelligent life. Through their conversation we will learn more about them and what brought them to the planet.

We then get a pretty cliche sequence of the pair hearing a noise in the undergrowth, they go on alert, tension, tension, blah blah blah, minor jump-scare, they discover the first Alien. The Alien they find is simply collecting fruit and seems completely unafraid of the pair (like the dodos, the aliens have no natural predators on Kepler so they haven’t evolved to fear other creatures).

Kate and Bridger realise the Alien isn’t hostile and follow it as it heads out of the woods and soon they discover an alien camp. They decide to let the team back at the base know about their discovery and head back just as a storm cloud comes into sight.

We jump forward to Kate and Bridger telling Captain Wayne about the Aliens while the storm rages outside. He seems cautious but accepts the pair’s analysis that they are non-threatening. Throughout their conversation, crew members pop in to report storm updates such as, the ship that brought the second wave in has been damaged, the farms set up outside of the shelters have been pretty much destroyed and all the comms are down.

Act Two (part one)

The storm passes but the sky remains blacked out by clouds. Wayne and Mackenzie pull together an emergency meeting where they explain that they still have no way of communicating with anybody off planet due to the dense clouds and they have lost a good chunk of their food supplies and any new food will be very difficult to grow. Despite this they are optimistic as there is a resupply ship only a two month journey away and, worst case scenario, they will be forced to hold out till then. The last thing they mention is that they have no idea when the clouds will pass but are optimistic they will be gone soon.

The symbolism of the clouds is that the settlers slowly come to think of themselves as gods. The clouds are a subtle reminder that, no matter how far we advance our technology and our species, we will always be at the mercy of nature. Another symbolism of the clouds is that they cast the planet into darkness for the rest of the film making it feel sinister and deadly despite us already knowing it is completely safe. As the storm comes the same night the Aliens are discovered, the darkness symbolizes how the planet is trying to protect its native population, the humans are the ones who don’t belong and nature is almost rejecting them.

As they have no control over the clouds and know they have an escape route if they run out of food, the group decides to just carry on with their individual missions.

The next day, Kate and Bridger come across the body of an alien who died in the storm which they take back to base to run tests on.

Kate checks in with Mark from time to time to track his futile attempts at genetically engineering Kepler’s natural resources but everytime he injects something alien into the fruits they die (metaphorssssss).

Other than the brief check ins with Mark, the first half of act two mainly focuses on Kate and Bridger learning about the aliens and their culture. They essentially learn everything I outlined in the Aliens chapter of this blog post and Kate even develops the basics of their language. We notice how Kate seems to become a new person when she interacts with the aliens, completely coming alive.

Bridger reveals to Kate that his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident back on earth. The sight of an alien mother with her child strikes a chord with Bridger and he develops a massive respect for the aliens as their own people, not just something to marvel over and he develops a real care for them and a desire to protect their simple way of life.

Time passes but still the clouds refuse to disperse which causes some concern amongst the camp and we soon see the first signs of tensions forming. But for the most part they are let go of while they wait to hear from the resupply ship which they are trying to convince themselves is coming.

The final major event before the midpoint is Parker discovering the valuable material, it is only mentioned in a brief conversation but I want this plot point to be set up before the midpoint.

Midpoint

Two months passes from when the storm hits and the group begins to grow anxious, worrying it may not come. But, just after I’ve had enough time to build up some tension, the group receives a message that the supply ship is above the planet and is going to drop down some supplies. But, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that the ship crashes on entry to the planet. This marks the midpoint of the film.

Act Two (Part Two)

The group is thrown into panic and again calls a meeting to figure out what to do. They decide to focus all their efforts on sorting out a reliable food supply. Plans are made to tear down large parts of Kepler’s forests to make room for more farmland. Kate and Bridger try to argue this will jeopardize the alien’s food supply but they are ignored by Wayne.

A lot of pressure is suddenly put on Mark to bring forward some results and out of desperation he runs his own tests on the dead alien and discovers that their flesh is safe for human consumption, he quickly alerts the group of his discovery.

Some of the first wave settlers insist they should go about harvesting the aliens. Bridger argues hard against this, explaining that the aliens are completely innocent and shouldn’t have to die just to get the camp out of their own mess. The group accepts and agrees to prioritize sorting out their own food supply but it is clear many people are in two minds.

Disclaimer: This next part of the film takes place over a period of 4 months as the group’s situation gets worse and worse.

Kate and Bridger are aware that they won’t be able to look after the aliens if the camp completely runs out of food. They try to warn the aliens but cannot communicate the issue to them as the aliens have no concept of murder.

Kate has some difficult conversations with her robot who believes the group should eat the aliens as the robot is programmed to do everything in its power to keep the humans alive. Kate is forced to wrestle with her own morals as she tries to explain the humans are the aliens and it would be better for them to die than to wipe out the innocent native population.

Mark is in support of keeping the aliens as a backup food supply because he is worried about his reputation due to all his experiments being failures but Bridger is able to talk some sense into him and he agrees they should prevent any harm coming to the aliens at all costs.

Mackenzie oversees the destruction of more and more of Kepler’s forests being destroyed to make farmland. As a consequence, the aliens begin to run low on food and soon they start to show early signs of starvation. Kate insists the deforestation has to stop which causes a big clash between herself, Mark and Bridger against Wayne, Mackenzie and the rest of the first wave settlers. The two sides are now very clear for all to see; First wave settlers against second wave scientists, Parker remains neutral for the time being.

As the tensions become unbearable in camp, Parker descends into madness over the existence of the valuable resource and his inability to cash in on it and goes to Captain Wayne insisting that they have to eat the aliens otherwise they will all die.

Wayne calls a final meeting where he informs the group that eating the aliens is now back on the table. Another heated argument breaks out.

Realizing the damage is done, Kate rushes off to the Alien camp to make a final attempt at warning them of the danger they are in.

Despite the outcry, Wayne puts together a team to head to the alien camp, they arm themselves with the weapons they brought to Kepler to keep themselves safe from danger. Bridger arms a couple of the scientists, including Mark, with guns of their own and they rush out to try and talk Wayne and his men out of it.

Kate arrives at the camp and begins pleading with the aliens to run but they are preoccupied with something: Two of the Aliens have died of starvation and the rest of the tribe is conducting what appears to be a kind of funeral. Kate just watches the ceremony with helplessness and sadness, she quietly despairs to her robot as the aliens begin singing dark, ceremonial hymns (I decided the aliens can sing because singing is often refereed to as a universal language).

Wayne’s men are about to reach the outskirts of the camp. Bridger and the scientists desperately beg them to rethink and see the insanity of what they are doing but are shut down under the argument that humans must kill to survive. The begging turns to threatening and the two sides begin an intense stare down which attracts the attention of the whole camp who all pick a side and join in the furious argument, both sides have men armed with guns. Unavoidably, a shot is fired.

The battle is not pretty, better described as a bloodbath. The shots of violence are inter-cut with the alien funeral, their hymns lending a soundtrack to the whole scene. We, the audience, are not part of the battle but instead watch it through the eyes of the many robots brought along to assist the humans. They sit away from the battle, watching their masters slaughter each other, emotionless. Just as quickly as it began, the battle ends with no clear winner or survivors. We are left with an image of Kate watching the aliens burying the bodies of their dead, completely unaware of what has occurred back at camp.

Act Three

Kate wakes up in one of the alien huts, she concludes Bridger must have talked Wayne out of killing the aliens and heads back to camp with her robot. As she is walking she suddenly stops in realization, the clouds have dispersed. Overjoyed, Kate rushes back to camp.

When Kate arrives she sees the aftermath of the battle and is overcome with grief and begins desperately searching for survivors. She finds Bridger still breathing. He comes to and the two have a brief exchange where Bridger explains that this was the best outcome for the planet, how humans were never meant to be there and had only brought pain and damage to the world and its people. Bridger almost rejoices that the aliens will get there paradise back and can continue living without fear. Bridger dies in Kate’s arms.

Although devastated, Bridger’s words stick with Kate and she lets them sink in as she goes to examine the camp. In Mark’s lab she finds a tiny flower growing in the soil. Kate gets Mark’s robot to run a diagnostic and discovers it is safe for human consumption.

Kate then goes about deactivating all the robots and machinery the humans brought to Kepler. As she is turning off the communication devices she notices a message has come through from main command stating a relief ship is on its way to pick them up. Without hesitating, Kate types a response – PLANET UNSAFE, ABORT RELIEF MISSION, CAMP DEAD (or something along those lines).

Kate then grabs the last of the human food and water left on the farms, carefully puts Mark’s plant into a container and throws it all into a rucksack.

She leaves the camp and finds her robot, the only piece of machinery still running. She considers shutting it down but eventually decides against it. She takes a last look at the carnage and damage the humans were able to cause in less than a year on Eden before heading into the forest.

Final thoughts

This could probably go without saying but pretty much everything in the story is liable to change as I only had the initial idea about 5 days ago and still have a lot of problems to iron out, this is simply how the story stands 5 days into development.

The writing of the moral dilemma still needs a lot of work to ensure it doesn’t come off preachy but hopefully you can see what I’m going for.

Overall, I think it is quite a cool premise and I would love any feedback on the story itself as I think it has potential.

Also I apologize for completely ignoring the task brief, I can’t help but get sucked in to these writing tasks.

For this week’s FMP work, I chose task 1 – Invent a Superhero for current times. I chose this task as it feeds into the writing and storytelling side of my filmmaking, something I hope to improve and develop a lot. Throughout this blog piece I will be referencing Mark Kermode’s secrets of cinema video a lot so here it is if you haven’t already seen it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gg30/mark-kermodes-secrets-of-cinema-series-2-1-superheroes

Current affairs

The first thing mentioned in this video is how superheros were first created out of the great depression so I figured the first thing I should do is to pick a current affair that my character/hero will be born out of. It is no secret that we are currently in the midst of a global pandemic and could really do with some super heroes. Despite this, I don’t want to create a superhero born directly from this virus such as Captain Social Distancing or Hand Sanitiser Woman. For me, one of the most interesting things about this whole situation is how it has shone light on many of the issues in our society which have been largely ignored by governments in recent times, one of the biggest being the growing class divide. In the West, the gap between the poorest people in our society and the richest people has never been bigger and it just keeps growing, the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer and no one seems to be doing anything about it because the media and government, the people that run this country, belong to the group of people benefiting from this situation, the rich.

This seems like a much more interesting issue for a superhero to be based around because it is not as black and white as defeating a global pandemic. There are people opposed to ever fixing the problem and in order to fix it it would require some sacrifice. But after all, isn’t sacrifice what superheroes are all about?

Home

It is very common for superheroes to come from distant planets, be it Superman from krypton, Wonder Woman from Themyscira or Thor from Asgard.

These home planets are all very cool but my favourite superheroes are the ones from earth. People like Batman, Iron man or hawk-eye who have lived relatively normal lives (compared to superman and Thor, I appreciate being a billionaire is not a normal life) before becoming superheroes always intrigue me far more than those who are just super. Because of this, my superhero will come from Earth. This is because I want them to be caught up in human politics and have a strong connection to humanity rather than just turning up when we need them. I also want them to represent revolution and change, things that are ingrained in human society.

Many superheroes also come from made up places on earth, most notably Batman from Gotham City. I love this because it doesn’t tie your hero down to a specific area and alienate any of the audience. So, my hero will come from a fictional town in the United Kingdom which has a similar city layout to Rio De Jenairo in the sense that the rich and the poor are very close together. The city center will be very rich and the further out is very poor. My character lives in the poor section of the city. To make things even more general my character’s home city will only be referred to as The City.

Super Power

Now this is the most important part, what will my hero’s super power be? I find that a lot of my favourite superhero’s powers come from their character for example: Tony Stark was a weapons manufacturer so Iron Man is basically a flying weapon, Dr strange was a doctor so he gets mystical powers (because everyone thought doctors were magic in the past) and Black widow was a Russian spy so her superpower is being a total badass.

So, I figured I would take the same approach with my superhero. I want my character to be part of a rebellious movement, fighting against the rich to give power to the poor (yes he is very much inspired by Robin Hood) so his superpower will be that he can manipulate fire, basically a metaphor for the fires of rebellion, it’s quite on the nose but I like it. He will also have heightened strength because almost every superhero does and it will play into my narrative because he will be into MMA (I’ll come back to that).

Now, there are many superheroes who can manipulate fire such as human torch from the fantastic four who can literally ignite himself, Ghost rider who essentially becomes Satan and El Diablo from suicide squad who can spawn fire from his hands (he also becomes this Mexican fire god thing in suicide squad but I’m going to choose to ignore that).

I decided that my Superhero’s powers will be more like El Diablo’s as his character is also from a poor background, was in a gang and is very against using his powers, something I want my hero to come to be over time. Also suicide squad was one of the most awful films I have ever seen but I really liked El Diablo’s character so I thought I’d pay homage to him a bit as he was the only thing I enjoyed about that film.

I also want my Hero’s power to be a metaphor for gun violence so he’ll be able to shoot it out out of his hands like El Diablo but will not be able to set himself on fire like the human torch or ghost rider.

Name

A superheroes name is very very important and almost always has direct connection to their powers. So the first thing I did was to go over to google translate and type in fire, flame, ignite, etc. I translated to Portuguese as part of the story is inspired by the Brazilian Favelas. Two of my favourite results were Fogo (meaning fire) and Acender (meaning ignite). I loved the simplicity of Fogo but Acender caught my attention for a different reason. Acender looks a lot like Ascender which, in climbing terms, is a device which can be clipped to a rope to act as a foothold or handhold, essentially something that helps people climb. My hero’s goal is to help people climb the societal ladder so in short, it works perfectly.

I felt The Ascender was a little too overbearing and Cocky for my hero so I decided that The Ascender will be the name given to him by the media and how he is referred to by the people but Fogo will be what The Nightmen call him (I’ll explain who they are later).

Of course my hero will also need a birth name and when choosing what this name will be I delved into my history knowledge and chose two men who have made great strides in improving the lives of the lower class throughout history: Edwin Chadwick and William Wilberforce. In short, Edwin Chadwick was one of the first men to ever take the health of the lower class seriously in Britain and William Wilberforce was massively influential in the abolishment of slavery and donated a large amount of his money to various charities. So, thanks to these two men, Fogo’s birth name will be William Chadwick.

Alter Ego

Many superheroes have alter egos and those alter egos come in two types. The first is an alien who adopts a human persona to fit in, like Superman’s Clark Kent. The second is a human who adopts super powers but continues their human person when they are not saving the world, like Peter Parker.

I want William to live a normal life until he is given his powers so he will follow the Peter Parker path of alter ego’s, maintaining his Will/Fogo persona in day to day life and only becoming The Ascender when duty calls.

Origin Story

A superhero’s origin story explains how they got their powers, what their goals and beliefs are, what their weakness is, and why they act the way they do.

The first part of Will’s origin story is loosely based on Tommy Conlon’s from warrior. Will is born to a poor family in the poor part of The City. His mother dies during labour and his father turns to alcohol as a coping mechanism and regularly beats his son. Will is always surrounded by violence and, in his teens, he joins an MMA gym where he develops a reputation for being a fearless and ruthless fighter.

This reputation gets him picked by a local gang called The Nightmen. Their name comes from the role of a nightman in the 1500s who’s job it was to clean the cesspits and privies in towns and cities. The Nightmen joke that they were formed to clean up the mess made by the rich people. The Nightmen are heavily political and aim to wreak havoc on the rich, setting fire to and planting small explosive inside anything they can find in the wealthy sector of The City, they do not kill however, just disrupt. The nightmen are heavily inspired by the revolutionaries from Les Miserables, being primarily made up of forward thinking students.

Thanks to his courage, strength and passion, Will quickly climbs the ranks of The Nightmen until he is in a position of power, able to call the shots without getting his hands dirty.

This portion of Will’s story is inspired by Tony Stark. In my opinion, Tony Stark has the greatest character arc of any on screen superhero, starting off as a corrupt weapons manufacturer and ending up as the savior of the universe. Of course, Will cannot begin as a weapons manufacturer as he is born out of poverty but he does still cause violence and pain to others from the shadows, exactly like Tony Stark when we first meet him.

Now the really important part, How does Will get his powers? I decided I would give in to stereotypes and have Will’s powers come from a very predictable source. Within the heart of the poor sector of The City is a nuclear power plant which feeds power directly to the city center and Will’s father is one of the workers there. An accident at the power plant causes an explosion which kills all the workers and unleashes deadly radiation, not Chernobyl levels but enough to affect the health of the poor people living outside of the plant. Will sees the explosion and runs into the building eventually getting trapped by debris. When he is pulled out a few hours later he finds he is the only survivor. The rich make little attempt to clean up the fallout and many lower class lives are lost unnecessarily.

Fueled by rage, Will and The Nightmen plan an attack on The City’s parliament building. Despite the wishes of the other gang members, Will insists they keep in tact their ‘No-Kill policy’ and only set up a small bomb in a bin outside of the building to act as a warning. Will also insists that he carries out the mission himself along with the leader of the Nightmen, Garra (Claw in portuguese) to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Will and Garra sneak into the city center at night but are caught by security guards. The guards pull their guns out and in the panic Will’s new power takes over and he accidentally incinerates the guards (this is the first time Will discovers his power). In the chaos, Will and Garra flee back to the slums.

In the weeks following the incident, The City places harsh sanctions on the poor as a punishment for what they considered an act of terrorism. Riddled with guilt and confusion, Will leaves the Nightmen and goes into hiding. This upsets Garra who wanted to use Will’s power as a weapon against the rich and incite a full scale revolution. Despite Will’s departure, the seeds of revolution have already been sown and the Nightmen’s ranks are flooded with new recruits and they quickly drop their ‘no-kill policy’ and adopt guerrilla styles of fighting to spread mayhem throughout The City (inspired by the revolution in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay)

At this point Will is forced to decide whether he will remain in hiding or use his powers to save The City from all out Civil War.

Mentor

Behind every great superhero is an equally great mentor, be it Spiderman’s Uncle Ben or Batman’s Ra’s Al Gul, our heroes would not be nearly as super without the people who guide and teach them.

From my limited knowledge of Superheroes and their mentors, I have deduced that their are two different types of mentor, the passive mentor and the active mentor.

The passive mentor is the mentor with little to no knowledge of our heroes power such as Uncle Ben or Martha and Johnathon Kent. These mentors focus more on our heroes heart, helping them control their emotions and influencing them to do good and help others. While they have little influence over our hero’s power they have great influence over how our hero chooses to use that power.

The active mentor is a being who has a deep understanding of our hero’s power and often possesses the same power themselves. They help train our hero in how to use and control their new powers until our hero becomes even stronger than them. The active mentor can also have a big influence on our hero’s morals just like the passive mentor. However, many famous active mentors turn evil once our hero grows in power and it is only when our hero faces them in battle that they unleash their full potential.

For my Story, William will have a passive mentor. I have chosen this because I want superpowers to not exist in my universe before William gets his, to achieve this my mentor cannot have any understanding of his powers.

In Film Courage’s video, ‘How To Write A Great Mentor Character’, Eric Edson outlines six things to keep in mind when writing a great mentor:

1: The mentor can be any person, any age, who passes on skills and/or knowledge.

Will’s mentor will be the owner of his MMA gym, Sean Gunn. Sean is named after Will Hunting’s therapist from Good Will Hunting, Sean Maguire. I have named my mentor after Sean Maguire because like Sean, my mentor will have suffered great loss, a failed career and had a run in with alcoholism. Sean was a promising fighter in his youth but was unable to make it pro because of his problems with alcohol. He will pass on his skills in fighting to Will through Will’s time training at the gym. However, Sean will be unable to help Will develop his fire powers.

Sean’s son was one of the founding members of The Nightmen but was killed by a faulty explosive device on one of their first missions. Because of this, Sean is greatly opposed to the violent techniques of The Nightmen and strongly urges Will not to join them. When Will ignores his advice their relationship breaks down. After the incident at the parliament building, William will turn to Sean and hide out with him. During this time, Sean will open Will’s eyes to the damage The Nightmen are causing and show him how violence is the wrong way of helping the poor and will only serve to make their live’s worse. Ins In the end it will be Sean who convinces Will to come out of hiding and use his powers to save The City from erupting into war.

2: There can be more than one Mentor in a story.

In a way, William will have two other mentors in his story. The first, his father, will inadvertently teach Will what happens if he lets grief and anger control him. This lesson is what causes Will to leave the Nightmen after he discovers his power because he realises they have abandoned politics and are now solely driven by anger over the Power plant accident. Will’s father is directly inspired by Paddy Conlon from Warrior.

Garra will be Will’s final Mentor. As the leader of The Nightmen, Garra will teach Will how to move like a ghost, avoid security, break into cars and buildings and use explosives. Garra will also show Will many secret pathways in and out of The City’s rich sector. William will use of these skills throughout his fight against evil.

3. The Mentor often dies, but not always.

William will be unable to decide whether to follow Sean’s advice and become a hero or stay in hiding out of fear of his powers. Luckily, Will’s decision becomes a lot easier when Sean is killed in the crossfire of a small skirmish between some members of The Nightmen and The City’s police. This will be the inciting incident that inspires William to become The Ascender.

4. The Mentor gives the hero a life saving gift.

Because of his son’s involvement with The Nightmen, Sean knows a lot about Garra and who he is on the inside. In his dying words, Sean tells Will never to trust Garra and to always fight only for the people. This advice will eventually save Will’s life when Garra turns evil later in the story.

5. The Mentor can be dishonest, immoral, or a reprobate

Will’s two other Mentor’s tick this box for me. Will’s father loses his morals to alcohol and Garra, while following a strict moral code, is very dishonest.

6. The Mentor can be negative and teach the wrong way to do things.

I decided I wouldn’t have Sean teach Will anything wrong because Will will open with such a skewed view of reality that he really needs someone to come in with all the right answers, someone like the great Master Yoda perse who only appears for a short amount of time but has all the right answers.

The Villain

No Hero is complete without a great Villain. Be it Magneto, Lex Luther or even Thanos, every superhero has their arch nemesis who they must face off against in order to win the day.

As I have already mentioned, the villain of my story is going to be Garra, the leader of The Nightmen. I have always loved villains who dip in and out of ally and antagonist such as Magneto or Loki but the actual inspiration for this dynamic is from Rapman’s Shiro’s story.

In this short film (the first of three parts) it is revealed that Shiro’s best friends Kai has been going behind his back the whole time and at the end of the video Kai becomes the antagonist. I loved this twist when I saw it and decided it would be an interesting dynamic to put into my film.

After the incident at the Parliament building Garra will reveal to Will that he has been planning a full scale war for years and has slowly been building a massive arsenal of weapons including Bio-weapons that he will arm The Nightmen with when the time is right. Garra hadn’t told Will this because he was afraid Will would oppose it but after the incident at the Parliament building Garra knew a war was coming so he tried desperately to get Will on board with his plan. Of course Will refuses and goes into hiding with Sean.

Garra then gets worried because he is aware of Will’s power and orders The Nightmen to hunt him down while also gearing up to start the war with the upper class, transitioning him into the story’s villain.

Of course, it is very important to write a good superhero but in my opinion a well written villain is far more important to a great superhero film. For me, the greatest written villain of all time is The Dark Knight’s take on The Joker. I watched a video by The Closer Look (an incredible channel) outlining how to write a great villain but connects it directly to The Joker and I figured now is the perfect time to revisit that video.

The first thing mentioned in the video is that the Villain should have more power than the Hero but you should shy away from making it the traditional form of power such as money. Some of Garra’s power will come from The Nightmen but most of his power will come from his reputation and favour with the lower class. Despite his actions having negative repercussions for the poor, Garra will be a well known and loved figure and this will give him a lot of power over Will. Will is trying to save the poor but the poor love the man he is trying to save them from. That dynamic seems quite interesting to me and I’d be curious to see if it would work in a Superhero movie. Of course, once Garra reveals he plans to execute all the upper class he loses favour with the masses and this helps Will to defeat him (because the whole message of the story is how much power we have as long as we stand together).

The second thing talked about is that the Villain has to have a good motivation. Garra’s motivation will be that he is trying to overthrow the rich and take control of the City himself so that he can improve the lives of the poor. This is a strong motivation in my opinion because he has good reason to hate the rich as they have treated him and the people around him terribly for all of his life. This is also the biggest reason why I decided to have Will be a part of The Nightmen in the beginning, so that I could invest the audience in Garra’s motivations and goals so that they could relate to him a lot more even when he turned violent.

The part of the video that has influenced me the most is when he outlines how Batman and The Joker’s goal is the same yet their philosophies differ. I tried to recreate this a bit in my story. Will and Garra both aim to improve the lives of the poor but their methods of doing that are completely opposite. Garra believes war is the only option and The City will only be free once every member of the upper class is killed. Will, on the other hand, knows that simply removing the upper class is only a short term fix and if they want to really improve life for the poor they have to fight diplomatically and turn the rich to their side (he learned this from Sean). Also Will is opposed to killing people.

The next part states you should let your Villain have victories. Of course I cannot write such a brilliant plot like The Dark Knight that has the villain win no matter what in such a short amount of time but I will still give Garra little victories. He will win the favour of the people, he will successfully start the war and he’ll even successfully overthrow the leaders of The City and put himself and The Nightmen into power. But, in the end, I cannot let Garra win outright because I haven’t written my characters or plot to allow that to happen so The Ascender will succeed in stopping Garra carry out his mass execution of the upper class and will also succeed in helping the lower class see the consequences of war and convince them that changing society is easier when we all work together.

The video ends by stating the importance of making your villain believable and I tried very hard to make Garra’s character and motivations believable but you can judge whether I succeeded or not.

Now I’ll quickly explain why he is named Garra, it is because he loves fighting in close quarters and wears gloves kitted out with claws (inspired by black panther) and I think I mentioned earlier that his name means claw in Portuguese. It is also a loose metaphor to knife crime.

Side Kick

Ah, the trusty side kick. No hero is quite complete without their sidekick so I thought I’d give William his own one. Most sidekicks in superhero films tend to be super themselves; Batman’s Robin, Iron man’s war machine and Captain fantastic’s whole crew are cool and all but my favourite sidekicks are the one’s without super powers, the ordinary folk. I’d say my favourite sidekicks of all time is Commissioner Gordon from The Dark Knight (can you tell I love that film). I love Commissioner Gordon’s character because he’s just a normal person trying to do what he believes is right, no super powers or anything, just like you and me. To honor the legendary Commissioner Gordon, my sidekick will only be referred to as James (Gordon’s first name)

The one danger with making the poor support Garra in the beginning is that it runs the risk of making the poor people look like the bad guys at the start. To try to avoid this I will have my sidekick represent a small pocket of the lower class that doesn’t follow Garra, showing that they do exist.

James will begin the story as a low ranking member of The Nightmen but turns against them when Garra reveals his murderous plan (inspired by Finn from the Disney Star Wars films) and goes to find Will after he learns that he also left The Nightmen.

James was also the only other member of The Nightmen to attend Sean’s MMA gym and was actually the one who made Garra aware of Will and helped him get recruited. Because of this James is able to track Will down and teams up with him. James never actually outright leaves The Nightmen and remains in their ranks acting as a spy for Will.

When designing James’ character I got inspiration from another video with Eric Edson but I didn’t follow it quite as religiously as I did when I was designing Sean.

Love Interest

I wasn’t sure whether to have a love interest into my story but I watched this video by Terrible Writing Advice and they insisted all stories should have a romantic subplot so I decided I’d follow their advice.

If I’m being completely honest I cannot think of any superhero love interests that have particularly interested me so I’m going to try design one from scratch. However I will be drawing some inspiration from other films just none from other Superhero films I have seen.

Like James, Will’s love interest will represent those who oppose Garra and she will do this by belonging to an anti-war movement amongst the lower class. Her looks and bravery is inspired By Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, because of this I will call her Katie.

She will come from a slightly better off family than Will but still be in poverty. My inspiration for this is actually from a book I studied for my GCSEs called The Secret River where the protagonist William Thornhill marries a local girl who he perceives as being quite well off but is actually struggling for money just like him (that’s not a massive part of the plot I just liked the idea).

Like Katniss Everdeen’s romance with Gale in the hunger games, Katie and Will were childhood sweethearts but Katie was forced to break up with Will after he joined The Nightmen as she disagreed with their methods. Will accuses her of being too sheltered to appreciate how much the poor are struggling and they do not speak for a long time. After the death of Sean, Will seeks out Katie as he has nowhere else to hide from The Nightmen and eventually he tells her of his powers.

Throughout the story their feelings for each other will quietly grow again but in the background.

I do not want Katie to just be a love interest though which I why I made her a part of the Anti-War movement. She will eventually play a massive part in turning the population against Garra once he reaches power. This is inspired by every love interest in a superhero film which hasn’t just been a love interest.

Costume

I won’t go into massive detail over The Ascender’s costume because it’s not my speciality. However I do want it to be similar to that of David Dunn from Unbreakable in the sense that it is just normal clothes fashioned into a cool look.

One thing I am sure about though is I want him to wear a stab-proof vest as a direct shout out to Stormzy’s look when he headlined Glastonbury. Stormzy’s peaceful way of protesting the elite upper class is a big inspiration for Will’s character.

Theme song

The final thing a superhero needs is a badass theme song. I don’t have one particular song in mind but if I was to have a collection of artists write a soundtrack for the film the first people I would go to would be Royal Blood, Idles and Rage against the machine. I need a song with political undercurrents but a great energy and passion and I think those artists could really deliver on that.

The song closest to the sound I’m looking for, however, is Royal Blood’s ‘Out Of The Black’. I also love the title because it connects to Will leaving the Nightmen which is a cool coincidence.